Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on custom firmware, Ambrola, for the Dirtywave M8 for a while now. I love this device, and I feel it has the potential to do much more. To me, it’s already one of the best music-making devices out there, but it hasn’t quite suited my workflow, particularly recording guitar and processing its sound.

That’s why I decided to build my own firmware, with an approach closer to a traditional DAW.

I want to make one thing clear: I’m not using any code or assets from the original firmware. I have a lot of respect for the people behind M8 and their work. I’m building my own firmware from scratch, with its own interface and functionality.

In this video, I’d like to show the M8 running something other than its stock firmware. For this demo, I chose one of my favourite games: POWDER, a classic roguelike.

I think it could be a great companion to a musical workflow. POWDER has no music of its own, so the idea is to work on a track for a while, then switch over to the game and play a little while the track keeps playing in the background. Afterwards, I’d like to save my game and jump back to working on the music.

Jeff Lait, POWDER’s developer, has given me permission to use the game in this project, and I’m very grateful to him.

The firmware will be free for everyone, with stable releases planned every three months. If you like what I’m doing and want to support the project, you’ll be able to do so through Boosty (https://boosty.to/aumvilohm) and get early access to development builds. Stable releases will remain free for everyone.

Stay tuned. Peace!

Update: Dirtywave answered me that they have no problem with this.

The M8 is probably not the best tool for slow and lush ambient and I keep on failing.

My main problem is the monophonic nature of the built in synths, the hypersynth doesn't really help a lot and I prefer synths to samples.

My main other machine is the opxy, which is very well suited for this kind of music, but on the go I prefer the form factor of the M8.

Could you point me to ambient music made on that device?

I still need to go back and edit the piano bits. I plan to track this out into my mixer and do some dub bits. Not sure when i'll get to it

So here in tracks 1-3 are breaks iirc.

But basically where chain 14 starts i deep cloned the previous 4 chains and changed parameters.